Camaro roof renovations

If youâ€™re a regular reader of Hemmings Muscle Machines, you may recognize my â€™67 Camaro RS. Itâ€™s a fairly basic ride, sourced from southern California where it seems to have lived its entire life before getting shanghaied and brought back to Vermont. The car has been serving to fulfill a longtime daydream for me, allowing me to travel about in a fully functional and presentable first-generation Camaro, something I last did back in the late â€˜80s, though â€œfully functional and presentableâ€ may be generous descriptors for that car, a â€™69 that I still own, but which spent about 15 years in various garages.

That was back in 2000, and the Camaro had just come off of about two years of daily commuting in Los Angeles. Having been treated like a late-model Honda Civic, it had suffered a bit, but the mechanical issues where dealt with, some of the body scars were touched in, and the daydream became reality. It was nearly perfect for my criteria: It ran and drove well (enough) and looked pretty good, at least from a few paces away. It was still almost completely stock, with a 327 two-barrel, Powerglide trans, single exhaust and manual four-wheel drum brakes. I added a four-barrel, had stock-type dual pipes bent up, and slipped some disc brakes behind the rally wheels, which I upgraded from 14s to 15s.

I drove the car frequently like this, polishing the aged budget-priced paint job it had received from a prior owner at some point and not worrying if it picked up another chip or scratch. It still looked good, but not good enough to fret over; someday it would get redone, but that day was off in the future.

There was, however, one area of concern that continued to nag: the lumps under the vinyl top.

When I bough the Camaro, they were already forming, clearly the result of rust occurring below. There were also paint blisters all along the bright molding bordering the top on the quarter panels. I monitored them to make sure they werenâ€™t advancing, and out west, and with lots of indoor storage, they were not. However, once we came to Vermont, moisture became unavoidable, even in the garage, and the oxidation resumed its pace. Something had to be done.

So, once last summer wound down, we made an arrangement to store the car with Classic Restoration Enterprises in Pine Island, New York. The deal was that weâ€™d stash the car and start stripping the vinyl top ourselves, then hopefully clean up the rust and seal the roof before having the staff install a new top and touch up the paint. Unfortunately, what we found when we finally got the top off was worse than weâ€™d hoped. The good news is that the crew at Classic was fully capable of repairing the rust damage without having to install lots of new body panels, and they did it relatively quickly. The story with all the details is in the August issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines, set to hit the stands any day now.

As it sits, the Camaro has solid steel on its roof, covered in primer, while weâ€™re saving up to cover the next step, which will either be a new vinyl top, a painted roof, or maybe more. Now whereâ€™d I put that tax refund check?

Jeff Reevessays:

June 26, 2009 8:53 pm

Stick with vinyl top—slick-roof Camaros are just about literally a dime a dozen, but how often do you ever see one with fresh vinyl? By properly fixing all the current rust issues and painting with modern rust-inhibiting coatings, and indoor storage, you’ll likely never have to worry about rust under the top again in your lifetime…